VILE TREATMENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 July 1942, Page 3

VILE TREATMENT

GIVEN BY JAPANESE TO AMERICAN AND BRITISH PRISONERS. ALLEGATIONS OF TORTURE AND MURDER. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) NEW YORK, July 25. A correspondent of the United Press of America, Mr Robert Bellaire, from Lourenco Marques, describes the treatment given to newspaper men in Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbour. Mr Bellaire was immediately imprisoned and charged with espionage, and Japanese police beat him and choked him with a tie till he signed a dictated statement declaring that he had been well treated. The correspondent of the Associated Press of America, Mr Joseph Dynan, had several teeth knocked out for refusing to write a statement which the Japanese intended to use for propaganda purposes. The “New York Times” correspondent, Mr Otto D. Tolischus, was forced io sit, Japanese fashion, heels against hips, till wounds opened in his legs. His iface was slapped and he was partly ’strangled and was threatened with the firing squad. The American correspondents were asked repeatedly to make favourable broadcasts to America on pain of having their names removed from the list of exchangeable correspondents. Some Americans were charged with espionage and convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for three years; the sentences were then suspended and the exchange agreement was reached. Mr Bellaire, in a second dispatch, sums up six points of Japan’s present situation as follows: —First, the Japanese, even former Liberals, consider the war basically a struggle against the white race; secondly, the authorities are aware of Tokio’s vulnerability from incendiaries, and therefore are ruthlessly restricting the building of airraid shelters while promoting firefighting devices, under the theory that “if the people have not shelters in which to take refuge, they will be better fire-fighters”; thirdly, the RussoJapanese peace is maintained only because an attack is inconvenient for both sides, but all preparations are made for an attack on Russia if the Red Army is defeated in the west; fourthly, the Japanese are attempting to outflank the Russians in the Far East by seizing the Aleutians; fifthly, Japanese attention at present is focussed on breaking the Alaska-Midway-Panama defence line; sixthly, a propaganda offensive against the Japanese is ineffective because of the tight censorship; therefore the only formula for an Allied victory seems the old slogan, “Git thar fastest with the mostest men.” Mr Bellaire disclosed that the authorities, after the raid on Tokio, issued a warning that the American Embassy would not be supplied with food if the bombing was repeated. Mr Bellaire states that the Japanese police struck Sir Robert Craigie, who attempted to intervene, as Mr Vere and Mr Redman, the British Press attache, were being dragged from the Tokio Embassy. The Japanese had previously ransacked the Embassy records. Mr Redman was still in prison on June 15.

The Lourencq Marques correspondent says that the repatriated Americans alleged that the Japanese, in an attempt to extort admissions of espionage, threatened some prisoners with the guillotine, and said their wives and children would suffer. Some Britons committed suicide while imprisoned. Americans and Canadians earmarked for repatriation from Hong Kong are suffering from malnutrition. Internees in north China and north Japan suffered severely during the winter, being confined in unheated houses and cells when the temperature was below zero. Twenty American priests said to have been captured in Hong Kong on Christmas day, were taken to a ravine for execution and reprieved at the last minute and kept in a garage for three days tied in groups with insufficient food and water. The main prison camp at. Zentzuji is guarded by Koreans. The 365 men received 25 pounds of meat weekly and fruit every 10 days. The ration is stated to be the same as that of the Japanese Army. It is definitely known that bayoneting of prisoners occurred at Wake and Guam, though on a small scale. Reuter’s former correspondent in Tokio said that some repatriated Americans gave individual instances of sickening abuses, but the general treatment of internees throughout the Japanese Empire and occupied areas had been uniformly not so bad. It was evident, however, that whenever, an opportunity of occasion for discrimination rose, the British received the worst of it. Americans from Bangkok state that a hand grenade was thrown into a hut in which were herded about a score of British tin miners and theii womenfolk. The hut was machinegunned and those attempting to escape were bayoneted. The story is learnt from a girl victim who was treated foi wounds in a Bangkok hospital. She thought the attackers were Japanese but could not be sure. American Catholic priests from Hong Kong stated that a number of Canadian soldiers were., bayoneted. Conditions improved when occupation troops replaced the attacking force.